Jeremiah 8:22 Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? A distressed father, that had just left the sick bed of a beloved daughter, and was wandering through the streets in all the dejection of grief, may easily be supposed to have uttered himself in the language of the text. And if we may suppose that she had been long subjected to the want of a physician and a nurse, while death must now ensue as a consequence of that neglect, while there was a remedy at hand, and a physician hard by; but there was none at hand to call in that physician, or to apply that balm, by the application of which she might have been restored to health, joy, and life. One would grieve to hear the solitary moan of such a father, and haste to know if it is altogether too late to call in the kind and timely physician. I. THE DISEASE IS ONE OF UNIVERSAL APPLICATION. There has been no nation found that is not totally depraved. They all practised a gross and God-provoking idolatry. They made their idols as stupid and as devilish as they could, practising as gross a perversion of their Supreme Deity as possible, and then they practised upon man all the outrages that a perverted intellect could contrive. II. THIS DISEASE IS, OF ALL OTHERS, THE MOST CONTAGIOUS. It has been communicated through the wide world, and gone into every little ramification of every kingdom under the whole heaven. It poisons all the human relations, and mars every human compact; and, first of all, man's covenant with his God. The result of this is, that it has filled and loaded him with misery to the full, and all nature "groans and travails to be delivered from the bondage of corruption, and be brought into the glorious liberty of the sons of God." III. WHY IS NOT THE PLAGUE HEALED? 1. Sinners are not sensible that they are the subjects of this deplorable disease. The first object of a preached Gospel is to convince them of this fact. 2. If to any extent they are conscious of their condition, they love the very disease that cleaves to them. 3. They do not love the Physician. 4. They do not love the price at which they can be healed. It must be with Christ a mere gratuitous healing. 5. Sinners do not relish the manner of the application. This deep repentance, and this being healed by faith, destroys all human agency and contrivance, and gives God all the glory. (D. A. Clark.) Parallel Verses KJV: Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered? |
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